The vast cultural gap between western and eastern cultures alone is daunting enough, and America’s brash individualism doesn’t exactly fit into China’s Confucian collectivism. Despite all arguments that China is growing, changing, and becoming more individualistic, the lingering Confucianism, a long dynastic past, and a history of warring amongst themselves anchors rural Chinese society firmly in a different world. I found myself comparing the actions of traveling foreigners to my own. I realized that I knew so much more than them that a Chinese person could see which person was the traveler and which person was living in China based on how we walked down the street. Whenever I encounter foreigners I am shocked at how little they know about basic Chinese customs. Often I watch, horrified, as foreigners proceed to lose face after they have yelled at ticket sellers or train attendants. I try to slip back into the crowd and put on a Chinese face, but I am inevitably called to help. The f …

On the street outside the gate of Zunyi Medical College in Guizhou, people eat late. Around 5:30 p.m. vendors begin setting up tents and tables. They haul everything on carts from some other place. It’s almost mysterious how a place can change so radically every night, and yet it disappears by 1 a.m. …

It’s nothing new, to write about poverty. I’m not writing about it because I think I can do better than those who came before me, but to help myself better understand the things I have seen. While in China I have become extremely desensitized to things and taken on a defensive attitude resembling apathy. What I did and how I acted was done for self-preservation and to maintain my own sanity sometimes, so I often haven’t immediately reflected on my observations. …

I spend several afternoons each week talking with Mr. Yang, a teacher in the English department. He downloads stand up comedies to improve his English, and he listens to each one again and again, asking me for help on parts that are unclear. He is the only teacher in the English department who seems to care about continuously improving his ability to speak and understand the language rather than promotion. It’s a distinctly American value: continuous self-improvement. He doesn’t care about passing some future test, as do most people in this test-driven society. …

When everything is stripped away: my job, my friends, my role here – I am ultimately a foreigner. In some contexts these aspects of my life are gone, especially when I’m traveling or wandering around the city. I am wandering without a shield – a man without any ties to anything. The implications of being a foreigner here are quite different than someone visiting America, and the nuances have left me baffled often enough. …

I had heard about the lack of creativity in the Chinese classroom before coming to China. And then I experienced it in my classes as well. Many opportunities for student creativity were replaced by a safer, more standard method: meet the requirements, memorize the material, complete the assignment. Often student output amounted to little more than regurgitation and low-levels of creativity. …

Loading...

More

Blog Search

Keyword search across all the entries in this blog.

Browse previous blog posts by month and year of entry. You'll see all the posts for that time period.

Select Month

Show Earlier

Browse previous blog posts by month and year of entry. You'll see all the posts for that time period.